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the most distinguished natural philosophers

NOTES

the most distinguished natural philosophers

In general terms England was the center for scientific knowledge in the Europe of the late Enlightenment. A major reason for this was the presence of the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 shortly after the restoration of Charles II: its periodical, Philosophical Transactions, was still in Mary Shelley's day the principal scientific journal of the world. The president of the Royal Society at the time of the publication of Frankenstein was Sir Joseph Banks, one of the great explorers and botanists of the eighteenth century. Although Banks's diverse interests would not have specifically engaged Victor Frankenstein, we can be sure that his example would have been a guiding light for Walton. That of his successor, Sir Humphrey Davy, however, would have equally drawn Victor's admiration, since he was perhaps the premier scientist experimenting with the chemical effects of electricity in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, it should be noted, attended a number of anatomical lectures by John Abernethy in 1811.